Collage (US; April 1980)

Lene Lovich & Her Cuckoo-Bird Voice

"We have a show in England called "Top of the Pops" - it's really a chart show," says Lene Lovich. "And one thing I've always thought about: my mother's always been concerned about me. She wondered why I was still in art school, when I was getting so old." She pauses, chuckling. "She wanted me to have a job, a career of some kind. When I became involved in music, she thought it was even less stable. And I think it was when I got on "Top of the Pops" that I knew my mother would feel, uh, happier about the situation."

Lene opens her eyes wide and looks over at the video camera standing on a tripod a few feet away. She flashes a dazzling, toothy smile and fiddles with a bow-like decoration in her plaited russet hair. On tour promoting her second Stiff Records LP, Flex, Lovich is surrounded in her motel room by lighting equipment, microphones, cables and all the trappings of television as she glides through simultaneous interviews with Videowest and Collage.

Lene's talent lies in her ability to project her hiccupy, cuckoo-bird voice with such impassioned, breathless sincerity that she nearly takes your breath away. "Beware of promises," she sings in "The Night," a look at her mercurial first year in the record business.

"The Night" is "not only about the record business, but people in general who tell you stories in order to keep you happy," cautions Lovich. "People can lead you into a false sense of security, and if you're not smart enough to be able to see beyond that, you can get yourself into big trouble emotionally. I'd rather always know the truth."

While demands of fame have created a host of problems - among them, a minimization of her personal privacy - Lovich continues to maintain an open, friendly attitude toward her public. "One of the main problems in this business is being able to speak for yourself, being allowed to get through to people," she says, "I'm very concerned about that. I don't want to be an elitist person, I don't want to be obscure for the sake of it, I don't want to hide myself away. So I talk to people whenever I can.

"I don't really like the idea of stars," she says. "I think that, in the very near future, there will be less stars. And there will be more alternatives, more people sharing the limelight. I think that's a better situation. People would probably like a lot of different things if they were just exposed to them."

But for all her populist theories, Lene admits that she is occasionally bothered by fans who "are quite attracted to what they think it's like to be involved in this business. You find people interested in your private life - what kind of food you eat. It puts you up for an examination that most people never have to face. That's okay, if you don't mind being disturbed and have a lot of time.

"But it can be a bit disturbing. Sometimes I'll walk into a launderette, and people are suddenly concerned that, 'You're here alone, doing your laundry? What?' They don't understand. They have these odd ideas of what people in the music business are like. I mean, I like clean clothes as much as anybody." She bursts with laughter.

Lene's reaction to the demands of notoriety has been to forge a tighter bond with Les Chappell: "Life is a struggle for one/Make it double and two can survive," she confides in a tune called "Wonderful One." This may seem a bit prosaic for a woman whose stage presence is outrageously cartoonish - all flailing arms, can-can kicks and melodramatic facial expressions - but she insists that "the music we do is not just a visual thing, not just a gimmick, a theatrical experience. I like to involve mental images. When people get angry or sad, their minds are full of pictures. I try to piece together a story that contains these pictures."

Not surprisingly, Lovich has been one of the first artists in the emerging field of rock-video. "Stiff is very aware that the idea of using video is a very progressive thing to be interested in," she says. "The world is a very big place, and if you intend to reach many people it helps to be able to send a visual image so that people can understand your feelings behind the songs.

"Of course, video is a financial problem, because it's so expensive. But Stiff feels it is a good investment. So now we have a person working full time at Stiff who has been involved with films for a long time; we are creating a unit within the company for visual presentation. Stiff is just learning about video and the whole idea of video discs for the future. And I think it will be important in the future, especially here in America, because of the conservativeness that you find on radio. That's forcing video to become more important all the time.

"I'm just interested in presenting a total picture of what I do," she smiles gently. "And as you can't possibly be physically in the room with every person who plays your record, I think maybe video is the next closest thing.

"I don't want to become isolated, like somebody living on their own planet," says Lovich, growing serious and quiet. "I really like this world a lot. If I didn't like it, I think I'd remove myself from it, either mentally or physically. But I do like it, and I want to be part of it. Being in music can't keep me from that."